Why Superman Doesn't Take Over the World

by J. Brian O’Roark

  When information or insurance isn’t available, we see predictable problems. Relationships are strained when a secret identity is kept under wraps. People feel unsafe and distrust heroes when the physical world around them is repeatedly damaged during the routine activities undertaken by super-powered people. The unfortunate consequences of superhero activity are part of the costs of living in a world where extreme powers exist. When you have groups of people with different abilities existing in the same space, there is the potential for serious conflict.18 “With great power comes great responsibility” is another way of saying that with great power come costs.

  But let’s not leave this chapter on that depressing note. Sure, there are costs that must be faced by the third parties living in the comic world, but there are benefits—dare we say positive externalities—too. Many heroes have extraordinary powers, but some rely on a set of skills that are not alien or supernatural in nature to combat criminality. For some heroes, their powers are intellectual. In addition to all of the saving and good deed-doing, those powers of the mind have the potential to spill over into the lives of everyday people in the form of something amazing.

  Endnotes

  1. Thompson bullies Peter Parker but is a huge fan of Spider-Man. In The Amazing Spider-Man #17, he even forms a Spider-Man fan club (Lee and Ditko, 1964).

  2. Snapper becomes a sidekick for the Justice League of America, first appearing in Brave and the Bold #28 (Fox and Sekowski, 1960).

  3. Despite her own powers and hero identity as Squirrel Girl, Doreen was enamored with the hero group the New Warriors, especially Speedball (Nicieza and Medina, 2006).

  4. This happens often, but as an example see Justice League #6 when the team saves the world from Darkseid (Johns and Lee, 2012).

  5. The last of a race of humanoids who existed prior to the Big Bang, Galactus survived the ending of his universe and the beginning of the new one wrought by the Big Bang. His source of sustenance is absorbing the life energies of planets by consuming them.

  6. If you said Ghostbusters, kudos to you for getting the reference, but this is a book about superheroes, not comedians in goofy costumes…OK, it’s not a book about comedians.

  7. The complete analysis of Jameson’s Spidey-based psychosis can be found in The Amazing Spider Man #10 (Lee and Ditko, 1963).

  8. This example comes from Gruber (2007, p. 287–9).

  9. Coase won a Nobel Prize for his work on transaction costs in 1991. Transaction costs are the costs involved in carrying out a transaction. These are above the dollar price paid for a good and include things like the cost of negotiation or transportation.

  10. The formula itself is pretty basic algebra: B = P × L, where B is the burden of taking precaution, P is the probability of an event occurring, and L is the harm that might occur. If you do not take the proper amount of care when the burden on you for doing so would prevent a greater value in damages, then you can be found negligent of imposing harm on someone. This means that if B < P × L and you didn’t take care then you are guilty of negligence.

  11. The question of environmental rights is a relatively new one. People en masse don’t start thinking seriously about environmental costs until well into the twentieth century. In the United States, this culminates with the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency sets environmental standards and enforces the laws and regulations which ensure polluters stay in line.

  12. Adjusting for inflation, that amounts to $43.67 billion in 2018 US dollars.

  13. This is the source of the crude term “fridging.” Comic writer Gail Simone (n.d.) noticed that the device of killing off female characters assumes the sense of the macabre far more often than for male characters. She writes about this at her website: Women in Refrigerators.

  14. Used car dealers often purchase vehicles at auction and they are subject to the lemons problem like any other buyer.

  15. We know Lois Lane continues to date Clark even after she finds out he is Superman, but she had a crush on the Man of Steel first. Others don’t want the hero life; ask Bruce Banner’s former flame, Betty Ross.

  16. This antiquated allusion refers to the location of a prominent story in a newspaper. A1 is the front page of the first section. Above the fold means it is one of the two or three stories you see when you look at the front of the paper before you unfold it. If you have never seen a newspaper before, think about this as the headline story on a news website, or the notification of news stories you get on your phone, or…Oh forget it. If you don’t know what a newspaper is, this reference is probably lost on you anyway.

  17. Peter and M.J. were married in 1987 in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 (Michelinie, Shooter, and Ryan, 1987). M.J. knew Peter was Spider-Man. After all, prior to the nuptials she complained about cleaning footprints off the ceiling. That, and they have taken web-slinging tours of the city together.

  18. O’Roark (2010), O’Roark (2011), and O’Roark, Wood, and Demblowski (2012) discuss how bifurcated tournaments, which include drivers of very different abilities, apply to NASCAR racing. It turns out there are more accidents when you have those with mixed skill levels competing against each other. Knoeber and Thurman (1994) examine these dual tournaments in the broiler chicken industry.

  References

  Akerlof, G. A. (1970). The Market for “Lemons”: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84(3), pp. 488–500.

  Brubaker, E., Lark, M., and Lucas, J. (2009). Daredevil, #118. Marvel Comics.

  Busiek, M. and Anderson, B. (2018). Astro City, #50. Vertigo Comics.

  Claremont, C. and Cockrum, D. (1975). X-Men, #96. Marvel Comics.

  Coase, R. (1960). The Problem of Social Cost. Journal of Law and Economics, 3, pp. 1–44.

  Conway, G. and Kane, G. (1972). The Amazing Spider-Man, #121. Marvel Comics.

  Daredevil. (2015). [Television series episode]. Nelson v. Murdock. Burbank, CA: Pokaski, J. and Petrie, D.

  Fox, G. and Sekowski, M. (1960). Brave and the Bold, #28. DC Comics.

  Gruber, J. (2007). Public Finance and Public Policy, 2nd ed. New York: Worth Publishers.

  Harras, B. and Lim, R. (1989). Marvel Comics Presents, #19. Marvel Comics.

  Johns, G. and Lee, J. (2012). Justice League, #6. DC Comics.

  Jurgens, D. and Breeding, B. (1993). Superman, v. 2, #75. DC Comics.

  Knoeber, C. and Thurman, W. (1994). Testing the Theory of Tournaments: An Empirical Analysis of Broiler Production. Journal of Labor Economics, 12(2), pp. 155–79.

  Lee, S. and Ditko, S. (1963). The Amazing Spider-Man, #10. Marvel Comics.

  Lee, S. and Ditko, S. (1964). The Amazing Spider-Man, #17. Marvel Comics.

  Mackie, H. and Byrne, J. (1999). The Amazing Spider-Man, v. 2, #12. DC Comics.

  Marz, R., Carr, S., Auccoin, D., and Banks, D. (1994). Green Lantern, v. 3, #54. DC Comics.

  McDuffie, D. and Colon, E. (1989a). Damage Control, v.2, #1. Marvel Comics.

  McDuffie, D. and Colon, E. (1989b). Damage Control, v.2, #3. Marvel Comics.

  McDuffie, D. and Colon, E. (1989c). Damage Control, v.2, #2. Marvel Comics.

  Michelinie, D. and Aparo, J. (1977). Adventure Comics, #452. DC Comics.

  Michelinie, D., Shooter, J., and Ryan, P. (1987). The Amazing Spider-Man, Annual #21. Marvel Comics.

  Nicieza, F. and Medina, P. (2006). I Heart Marvel, #2. Marvel Comics.

  O’Roark, B. (2010). Chasing the Buschwackers: Unintended Consequences in NASCAR. Pennsylvania Economic Review, 17(1–2), pp. 52–64.

  O’Roark, B. (2011). Buschwhacking in NASCAR: Mixing Skill on the Road in NASCAR’s Junior Circuit. Virginia Economic Journal, 16, pp. 1–11.

  O’Roark, B., Wood, W., and Demblowski, B. (2012). Tournament Chasing NASCAR Style: Driver Incentives in Stock Car Racing’s Playoff Season. Eastern Economic Journal, 38(1), pp. 1–17.

  Simone, G. (n.d.). Women in Refrigerators. [Online] WiR. Available at: http://lby3.com/wir/ [Accessed April 4, 201
8].

  Smith, K. and Quesada, J. (1999). Daredevil, v. 2, #5. Marvel Comics.

  United States v. Carroll Towing Co. [1947]. 159 F.2d 169 (2nd Cir.); 1.

  Waid, M. and Ross, A. (2008). Kingdom Come. Burbank, CA: DC Comics.

  8

  Where Do They Get Those Wonderful Toys?

  How does someone like Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen, Clint Barton, or Kate Bishop end up in the company of Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Flash, or the Hulk? That first group of comic book aliases comprise a few of the non-powered, albeit extremely skilled, heroes in the superhero world. Batman, Green Arrow, and the two versions of Hawkeye—a bow-based sharpshooter with a bit of kung-fu fighting thrown in—along with a number of others, comprise a curiosity in a culture where flight, superhuman strength, and invulnerability to projectiles are common traits. Other instances where innate powers are noticeably lacking involve Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, who has a great suit but no obvious powers that make him extraordinary, and Nightwing, the grown-up first Robin, Dick Grayson, whose abilities stem from being a child circus performer. Another member of the Bat Family, Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, is really smart and ranks among the world’s most adept computer hackers, taking on the mantle of Oracle after she is paralyzed by the Joker, but her power factor equals zero. The same can be said for Batwoman, minus the hacking skills. She’s in the Bat Family but she just kicks bad guy butt, as does the Huntress, who may not technically be in the Bat Family but she hangs around the periphery. She and Batgirl form two thirds of the traditional all-female, crime-fighting force, the Birds of Prey, but they are skilled combatants, not super-powered like their teammate Black Canary. Put simply, there are some supremely skilled, albeit non-powered people, who are accepted into the superhero fraternity. Their abilities have been developed over time, rather than having powers since birth, or having those powers result from a bizarre, catastrophic occurrence.

  This should give those of us who aren’t from outer space or who don’t hang around the science labs some hope. Perhaps we can earn our superhero stripes through good old-fashioned hard work and ingenuity. What might give us pause, however, is that those heroes’ skills are often augmented by radical technologies that make the hero that much more accomplished. If you want to fight the bad guys it helps to have better tools than they do. Batman’s kit impresses the Joker who, in the 1989 movie Batman, asks “where does he get those wonderful toys?”

  In the real world, the police are obliged to work within palpable resource constraints. Budgets are limited and sometimes political negotiations prevent the money from flowing to where it is most needed, but superheroes are not so constrained. Because they work as private citizens, they can funnel their monies in the direction they deem most important, without the red tape and bureaucracy facing the men in blue. This leads to the innovations that help the under-powered heroes stay one step ahead of their sometimes very powered adversaries.

  This chapter will examine the role technology plays in the world of superheroes. For those with deep pockets, they can advance and support a technological agenda that will give them an advantage when battling criminals, but this is no different than a company that invests in research and development to remain one step ahead of its rivals in the business world. In fact, the ability of heroes to allocate resources efficiently is akin to the way firms determine how best to use their own resources. From an economic perspective, these advanced developments can be used to manipulate production functions and production possibilities curves, and that can make a super-powered wannabe into a contributing member of the superhero community.

  It’s Good to Be Rich

  You know things are real when they show up in Money magazine. Money ran the numbers and arrived at a list of the top five richest superheroes (Davidson, 2015). The world’s only trillionaire is the leader of Wakanda, currently T’Challa, the mythical Black Panther. T’Challa has an estimated net worth of $90.7 trillion as a result of being the sole owner, the monopolist if you will, of a resource called Vibranium, a metal deposited on Earth eons ago by large meteorites.1 In Doomwar #1 (Maberry and Eaton, 2010), we are told that T-Challa has a vault that contains 10,000 tons of Vibranium. That may sound somewhat impressive but it gets better. Vibranium, a super strong alloy that is used to make Captain America’s shield, goes for roughly $10,000 a gram. There are 453.59 grams in a pound and 2,000 pounds in a ton, so, if you do the math, you end up with one insanely rich king of a mysterious country somewhere in Africa.

  The slightly more down-to-earth measures of wealth find Tony Stark, the fabulous industrialist, in the $12.5 billion range, enough to design and manufacture a series of those awesome Iron Man suits, with a little left over to fund the Avengers’ missions. Bruce Wayne has an estimated $9.2 billion which helps keep the Batcave running and pays for the off books research and development at Wayne enterprises. Running a school for mutants isn’t cheap, so Charles Xavier must have a little cash stashed under a mattress somewhere. Approximations of his wealth are in the $3.5 billion range. That might not be quite enough though, so the aid of fellow mutant Emma Frost and her $1–$3 billion fortune comes in handy. Frost used to be an evildoer but has reformed her ways and uses her income as the CEO of an electronics conglomerate to funnel money to Xavier’s School for Gifted Children.

  Money has some notable omissions from its list. Green Arrow might be nearer the top as heir to the multi-billion-dollar Queen enterprises, although his alias Oliver Queen is on and off of the board of directors. Perhaps the most peculiar oversight is Ozymandias. The Watchman depicts Adrian Veidt as the world’s smartest and richest man. His otherworldly retreat in Antarctica aside, Veidt inherits money from his parents, then parlays it into a multi-national enterprise by putting his astonishing intellect to work finding patterns in the market that help increase the value of his fortune in an era before data analytics.

  Regardless of who you think is the top money dog, being rich endows you with significant advantages in life, especially if you want to play at heroics. For instance, Batman and Green Arrow, being the lineage of successful industrialists, have an almost limitless supply of resources. If you are a trust fund baby on one hand, and an aspiring superhero, notably without powers, on the other, it helps to have a comparative advantage in funding over your colleagues who might have powers but who also have to work a day job. Additionally, if you plan on spending your nights fighting bad guys you need to consider two things. First, are you able to do this job more effectively than the police? If not, why get involved? Second, are you able to be in any way successful? If you have no powers then you need one of two things, or even better, you need both. Your skill set must be second to none, including the ability to physically overwhelm the criminal element. Absent that, if you can’t beat them up, you’re going to need better tools than your adversaries.

  It is no mystery then that you aren’t going to find a financially desperate person fighting crime unless they have superpowers. Lists of the poorest heroes include Clark Kent, Peter Parker, Luke Cage, and Jessica Jones, who are all working for a living in jobs that pay fairly low wages, and college students such as Firestar and Squirrel Girl who have no consistent income stream and are thus struggling to make ends meet. The only consistent element between them is that they all have powers.

  So, to fight crime the non-powered folks need a leg up, something that is going to level the playing field. For most of them, that special something is not their fighting skills. Sure, they have physical talents and they certainly come in handy. All the hours spent training with monks and shadowy figures who teach them life lessons, along with killer ninja-type moves, provide great backstory fodder, but the bad guys they fight aren’t usually ninety-pound [forty-one kilogram] weaklings. Even if they are, they will hire their own death squads or resort to weapons with deadly force to accomplish whatever diabolical aims they have in mind. This means heroes must rely on their ingenuity. It is the creative element of the hero that can often win the day. Bat shark repellent may on a
rare occasion keep our heroes from a watery grave, but those Bat-a-rangs work wonders on a regular basis. It might seem cheesy but an arrow with a boxing glove at the end of it can be the difference between life and death.2 An Iron Man suit not only ups your celebrity status, it also gives you a fighting chance against alien invaders. The thing is, the remarkable innovations that come from heroes and the development of ideas have an analogy in economics.

  You May Not Want to Know How the Sausage Is Made

  One of the most important decisions a business must make is how to produce the goods or services it is selling to its customers. Rarely do firms think about what to produce. That is determined by the market. If you aren’t making things consumers want, you’ll know about it pretty quickly. Sales will fall, revenues will fall, then the axe will fall as jobs get cut. In market-based economies, there is something referred to as consumer sovereignty. This means that consumers dictate what a company will produce because they vote for goods with their dollars. If a firm isn’t satisfying the customer, it will be out of business because consumers will flee the market like rats from a sinking ship. Henry Ford famously said that consumers can have any color Model T they want “so long as it is black” (Ford and Crowther, 1922, p. 72). Today, that approach would get even the great Henry Ford fired. Consumers dictate their wants to sellers. They rule the market and sellers ignore this at their peril.

  As a result, the firm must find a way to produce what the consumer wants. To be profitable, they must do this in a way that most efficiently employs the resources at their disposal. Generally speaking, a firm has four inputs they utilize in the production process. These inputs are traditionally listed as labor, capital, land, and entrepreneurship. There are only four inputs because economists try to keep the tally as short as possible. Don’t think too badly of economists for doing this. It does make things much simpler, even if it means you need to be more imaginative about how inputs are classified. That being said, we’re talking about economics and comics in this book, so imagination is something that comes with the territory.